16459
|
Is it coherent that reality is vague, identities can be vague, and objects can have fuzzy boundaries? [Evans]
|
|
Full Idea:
Maybe the world is vague, and vagueness is a necessary feature of any true description of it. Also identities may lack a determinate truth value because of their vagueness. Hence it is a fact that some objects have fuzzy boundaries. But is this coherent?
|
|
From:
Gareth Evans (Can there be Vague Objects? [1978])
|
|
A reaction:
[compressed] Lewis quotes this introduction to the famous short paper, to show that Evans wasn't proposing a poor argument, but offering a reductio of the view that vagueness is 'ontic', or a feature of the world.
|
16460
|
Evans assumes there can be vague identity statements, and that his proof cannot be right [Evans, by Lewis]
|
|
Full Idea:
The correct interpretation is that Evans trusts his reader (unwisely) to take for granted that there are vague identity statements, that a proof of the contrary cannot be right, and that the vagueness-in-describing view affords a diagnosis of the fallacy.
|
|
From:
report of Gareth Evans (Can there be Vague Objects? [1978]) by David Lewis - Vague Identity: Evans misunderstood p.319
|
|
A reaction:
[Lowe 199:11 is a culprit!] Lewis put this interpretation to Evans, who replied 'Yes, yes, yes!'.
|
14484
|
If a=b is indeterminate, then a=/=b, and so there cannot be indeterminate identity [Evans, by Thomasson]
|
|
Full Idea:
We cannot accept the existence of vague objects, according to Evans's argument that there cannot be indeterminacy of identity. ...From the assumption that it is indeterminate whether a = b, we conclude, determinately, that it's not the case that a = b.
|
|
From:
report of Gareth Evans (Can there be Vague Objects? [1978]) by Amie L. Thomasson - Ordinary Objects 05.6
|
|
A reaction:
I think we should keep intrinsic identity separate from identity between entities. A cloud can be clearly identified, while being a bit fuzzy. It is only when you ask whether we saw the same cloud that Evans's argument seems relevant.
|
16224
|
There can't be vague identity; a and b must differ, since a, unlike b, is only vaguely the same as b [Evans, by PG]
|
|
Full Idea:
Two things can't be vaguely identical, because then a would have an indeterminacy which b lacks (namely, being perfectly identical to b), so by Leibniz's Law they can't be identical.
|
|
From:
report of Gareth Evans (Can there be Vague Objects? [1978], 4.7) by PG - Db (ideas)
|
|
A reaction:
[my summary of Katherine Hawley's summary (2001:118) of Evans] Hawley considers the argument to be valid. I have grave doubts about whether b's identity with b is the sort of property needed for an application of Liebniz's Law.
|
7903
|
The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
|
|
Full Idea:
The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
|
|
From:
Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
|
|
A reaction:
What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').
|
4800
|
Natural laws result from eliminative induction, where enumerative induction gives generalisations [Cohen,LJ, by Psillos]
|
|
Full Idea:
Cohen contends that statements that express laws of nature are the products of eliminative induction, where accidentally true generalisations are the products of enumerative induction.
|
|
From:
report of L. Jonathan Cohen (The Problem of Natural Laws [1980], p.222) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §7.1
|
|
A reaction:
The idea is that enumerative induction only offers the support of positive instances, where eliminative induction involves attempts to falsify a range of hypotheses. This still bases laws on observed regularities, rather than essences or mechanisms.
|